How do you get the gas company's attention?

So we park our car in front of the house, get out, and smell the distinctive odor of natural gas. Sniffing around, we conclude that it’s pretty clearly coming from the middle of the street. We go in and call the gas company. They say they’ll send someone out within the hour.

Indeed a couple of gas company employees arrive an hour later. They insist on checking out our basement, and of course detect no gas there. Their meter shows gas in the street, but none in the house. They go away and apparently file a report.

A couple of days later, the same sequence of events happens. Check the basement with their meter, etc., etc. Still no sign of a real resolution. We still smell gas.

Then a neighbor calls. Third time with the same rigmarole. One man tells us that repeated phoning is the only way to get action. But no conclusion.

Finally, we call a fourth time. This time they dig a big hole in the middle of the street, determine somehow that there’s a leak in the pipe leading to our neighbors’ house across the street, camp out in their truck all night, and leave in the morning after covering up the big hole with a steel sheet.

Now all is well. But did it really have to take four calls over a two-week span? This could have been really dangerous, after all.

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About me

I am starting my 21st year as a math teacher at Weston High School (the only public high school in Weston, MA, though sometimes it seems more like a private school). This is my 44th year as a teacher altogether. I also teach at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer (this was the 15th!), and for 21 years I taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA. Until recently I served on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.

I read, cook, and build my model railroad when I can. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our excessive number of cats.